


Catcher's Mitt

by flannypack



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous Relationships, Bang Chan is a Mess, Chance Meetings, Clubbing, Crossdressing, Drinking, Light Angst, Love Triangles, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Mildly Dubious Consent, POV Alternating, Soft Lee Felix (Stray Kids), Unresolved Emotional Tension, everybody's a simp for hyunlix, more like ambiguous hyunjin, only bc theyre drunk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:55:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26640265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flannypack/pseuds/flannypack
Summary: He watched the back of him go until it disappeared into the jungle of arcade machines, and instantly, it was like the only way he’d ever existed in Chan’s memory was bathed in bright pink and white lights, his voice nearly drowned out by the sounds of the arcade, candy peeking out the top of his fancy looking bag. Decked out in shiny metal jewelry that made the flint rocks in Chan’s stomach clatter together, because there was nothing else in the world like the way it’d brought out all the soft shapes in Hyunjin’s face.And his long, blonde hair.--chan is in his first year of grad school in kyoto japan when he ends up meeting hwang hyunjin, an enigmatic beauty.
Relationships: Bang Chan & Yang Jeongin | I.N, Bang Chan/Hwang Hyunjin, Hwang Hyunjin & Lee Felix, Lee Felix/Seo Changbin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 66





	1. wherefore art thou, yang jeongin

**jjeong**

where did you say you were? 

**Today** 10:48 PM

jeongah, i’m right outside yokohama world porters.

call or text as soon as you see these.

  
  


Chan stared down at the white light of the screen for a just a few moments longer, before pocketing his phone. He sighed. 

All this outing was _supposed_ to be was a day trip to Yokohama, where he and Jeongin were gonna air out their midterm grievances through a couple rounds of window shopping, and then go straight to Shinjuku when they were finished to turn in for the night at Changbin’s. Chan wouldn’t have guessed that right when he was supposed to be leaving Yokohama _with_ Jeongin, what he’d end up doing instead, was becoming a one-man search party, _without_ Jeongin, and he’d get in a couple more hours of walking around Shinko island. 

A couple more completely nerve-wracking hours. He wished Jeongin would pick up the goddamn phone. 

Chan knew in his heart’s heart, Jeongin was probably safe. Wasn’t like kidnappings of 71 kilo 19 year old boys were particularly common in Japan, but the kid had always been like family and Chan’d be a liar of the highest order if he tried to pretend he didn’t dedicate most of all his cramped thoughts rotting at the hearth of his cerebrum to worrying about Jeongin. And what Jeongin was doing, and how Jeongin was feeling, and what was the sum of the two.

It didn’t help that the prospect of abusing Ms. Yang’s trust in him to take good care of her “second child destined for greatness” while he got his bachelor’s in Kyoto loomed over Chan like the shadow of a heavy rain cloud—just feeling _way_ too inevitable to not end up becoming as tightly wound of a person about Yang Jeongin as Bang Chan could be. 

Most of the interior stores of the mall where he’d first lost Jeongin had closed for the night, flushing Chan back out into the street where he started a new set of laps around the nearby landmarks and the mall’s perimeter, and ended each one without Jeongin. Chan could hardly believe he wasn’t spotting the color of Jeongin’s windbreaker or the blue catchlight in his hair among the thinning stream of leftover daytime pedestrians. Jeongin wasn’t particularly tall or particularly loud, but maybe Chan suggested Jeongin wear his yellow windbreaker so it’d have the same visibility effect as a construction worker’s neon safety vest. 

There were a few shops and arcades that bled out to the exterior section of the mall that didn’t look like they were approaching closing, buzzing steadily with teeny pockets of a new night crowd. Earlier that evening, Chan had only given them a quick once-over with his head briefly poked inside. 

Allowing a shiver to chew miserably at his chest, Chan decided it wasn’t a matter of if he was going to go inside every single one of the stores on the strip, but how thoroughly he was fixing to go about it. It was a non-negotiable that he wouldn’t leave a single stone unturned, nor underside of a vending machine uninspected. 

He heaved another sigh and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, then started towards the pools of colorful lights that cascaded across the sidewalk from both sides of the narrow boulevard.

The steady thrum of anxiousness was dull but acute like the deeply sourced pain of a stomach bug, so Chan tried refocusing his idle train of thought. Changbin wasn’t even a fraction of the worrier Chan managed to be, so his voice chimed in in the periphery of Chan’s thoughts.

_Fixate on something else, Chris_. _Something unprovocative_. 

Chan lugged his gaze up from where he'd steadily been keeping it along the tops of his own converse that scuffed the concrete while he walked. Taking a hand out of his pocket only to fiddle with the short hair at the nape of his neck, he decided he’d think about how pretty the Yokohama World Porters’ outdoor shop lights looked in the new context of the night.

Despite the misfortune of _why_ he ended up seeing them that night, with a slow, thoughtful hum, Chan took in how beguiling it was that the lights cut through the darkness of the world laying on either side of each shop entrance. Like an instance of something magical, or even cooler, something alien, to make it look so corporeal when light didn’t have an edge, and darkness didn’t have mass. 

At night, Chan thought, that specific portion of the boulevard where the left face of the mall ran parallel to the road kinda looked like an isolated dimension. Like a portal to another world where he could see the other side. That contained otherworldly lifeforms who only existed in the supernatural color of the inside of an arcade, like magenta-pink, and washed out electric blue. Or maybe something really magical, like an old Japanese wizard, or a dragon that hoards arcade machines.

Chan was feeling a little bit better. If Jeongin _had_ been hiding in one of the stores along the strip the whole time, at most, Chan would be upset he hadn’t thought to look there sooner, but at least, Jeongin probably would’ve had a whole lot of fun. 

Finally stepping into the pink lights of a Sweets Road, Chan stopped. As he turned himself towards the threshold of the arcade, he held his breath and slipped his phone back out of his pocket, thumbing through his recent texts. 

**jjeong**

where did you say you were? 

**Today** 10:48 PM

jeongah, i’m right outside yokohama world porters.

call or text as soon as you see these. 

  
  


Chan sucked in air and raked a hand back through his hair. 

“ _No panicking_ ,” he breathed before he could get out an expletive. There’d be a good reason why Jeongin couldn’t answer and if he was in the outdoor shopping area it was Chan’s fault for not coming sooner. Chan squeezed his eyes shut with a cut-off groan then scrubbed his sleeve across his face to try and approximate what it might feel like to splash himself with cold water. Couldn’t mix up being worried and getting something done, or everything would be worrisome and nothing would get done.

Looking back down at his phone, Chan brought up a picture of Jeongin. It was only a few days old from inside Changbin’s apartment, where Jeongin held up Changbin’s tiny brown pet bunny under his chin and grinned in front of the bedroom doorway. 

“Hey,” Chan said at a figure in a black puffer crouched at a claw machine just within the threshold of the arcade. Chan trotted up to the side of the machine with his phone in-hand, and reached down to tap the person’s back. 

“Hey,” he said again, then quickly started scrounging together in his head all the wily bits of formal Japanese he’d tried to absorb during the few months and a half-semester he’d been in Japan. 

“My… My brother, he—” 

With a confused grunt, the stranger jerked their head up from where it’d been between their knees while they’d been squatting. Blonde hair—long, blonde hair—bounced in a ponytail when they shook their head, and when they stood up, it felt like they kept on standing up for a few long, drawn-out seconds. Up, and up, and up, until they were peering down at Chan with steady black eyes through a small curtain of parted fringe of even more long, blonde hair. 

Chan didn’t think many models traveled outside of Tokyo? 

For a split second, he was drawing a blank on his Japanese. 

“I, um, he,” Chan stumbled, glancing down in the middle of his thought to catch the fullness of the person’s lips before he even realized he’d done it. He snapped his eyes away and his face and neck immediately burned. 

A dumb “sor— _sorry_ ” came out of him, then he yanked his focus on a leash back down towards the phone in his hand. The timing of Chan’s knee-jerk compulsion to overcorrect for no reason was _shit_ of course, because he felt the full force of it collide with the internal scramble of trying to remember how to say literally everything else. 

For a second it was just stupid and overwhelming, like all the dozens of sprawling computer cables that constantly exported and imported information back and forth from Chan’s head, overlapping and looping through each other at the years-long neglect of the operator, felt like they’d suddenly been tied into a knot. 

Losing Jeongin, forgetting Japanese, this _model_ being _so_ —

“I don’t speak, um, Japanese very good,” the stranger piped up in English, his voice just barely louder than the jingles coming from the arcade machines surrounding him.

Chan almost didn’t hear him, but he _did_ hear him, thank goodness, and his heart skipped a beat. 

“English,” Chan rushed in his native tongue, able to meet the blonde’s eyes again. His accent weighed on every word, “you speak English? I speak English, and I—” 

“No!” The stranger quickly cut in, “no, I—” he held up his hands, full of candies each, in front of his chest, gesturing at himself, “I am Korean. Do you speak Korean?” 

Just then, his features looked especially gentle.

His eyebrows furrowed and his crescent-moon eyes grew big and pleading. Chan would’ve nearly been transfixed if it weren’t for the exhausted thrumming in his chest when he realized, urgently nodding his head at the boy’s admission, that he could finally, _finally_ get more than a couple incoherent words in between the two of them. 

He held up his phone again and pointed at Jeongin. 

“ _Yes_ , yes,” Chan said, switching to Korean, and immediately the stranger seemed to relax. His expression softened again and Chan watched it morph into placid curiosity. 

“This is my little brother, have you seen him at all in the past few hours? Any of your friends? His name’s Jeongin, he’s Korean too.” 

Chan kept searching the stranger’s face, waiting, still flushed, for the tiniest signs of recognition. He was practically bum-rushed by the tidal wave of relief and following wave of anticipation when the stranger took one look at Jeongin’s picture then nodded his head. 

“Yeah, he was inside sitting—or, well, sleeping I guess—at the cafe when I got here.” 

“Thank you,” Chan breathed, “fuck, thank you.” He pocketed his phone and stepped past the boy, scanning the interior before looking towards him again. 

“Could you point me in the right direction, or…? I- this arcade, I-I haven’t come in from this side before.” 

The boy smiled—Chan started to fiddle with the hair on his nape—and nodded. He stooped down to grab a fashionable-looking bag from the space on the other side of the machine!before dumping all the candy he’d been holding into it and slinging the strap over his shoulder. 

With a gentle touch on his elbow the stranger coaxed Chan to the right, and further inside what was turning out to be a shockingly deeper space than Chan had first assumed. 

Chan had come to the World Porters mall a month earlier by himself, and that was the only other time he’d ever been inside Sweets Road. The premise of a “sweets arcade”, where the only thing you could play to win were a bunch of sugary snack foods, sounded appealing enough to only wander a little more than a couple feet inside. The alternating sugary pink lights overhead, which also embellished over half the bleached-white game stations, as well as the strong, pervasive smell of nonspecific sweetness, made the place feel like a surreal rendition of how an 8 year old child would describe somebody else’s nostalgia. Idyllic but mostly approximated.

Chan ended up feeling like he was way out of his depth. Kind of ashamed and a little bit nauseated from the smell. 

Suffice to say, the sweets arcade was made with somebody very specific in mind, he guessed. After feeling guilty enough to play one game before he walked back out, Chan decided he’d give away the boxes of chocolate he won to someone who would eat them. 

Chan stole a quick glance at the stranger before staring straight ahead again. He was keeping a brisk pace, but not urgent. The bodies of games they were passing on the left didn’t all stick out from the wall uniformly, so as they walked, Chan was falling behind the tall silhouette of the boy over and over, trying to streamline all the maneuvering they both had to do. After every instance the boy would angle himself towards Chan, enough to hold out a hand and smile at him and then guide him back up to his side with the same hand on his elbow. 

Chan couldn’t tell if it was deliberate, but it wasn’t _unkind_ —but in general he wasn’t good at _situations_ like these, nor had he expected to end up in one that day. Definitely not under the current circumstances. 

Coming to a bit of a clearing on the right, the smell of baked goods hit him first, then the sight of Jeongin’s bluish head cradled in his arms where he was slumped over at a table. 

“Jeongin!” 

Chan felt like his fucking spirit was running faster than his body as he jogged over to the captain of being biggest _pain_ in his ass and clapped his hands over the tops of his shoulders.

“Jeongin, Christ alive…” he whispered, groaning out a sigh when Jeongin was roused and slowly sat up, bleary-eyed and fussing over his eyeballs with the bottoms of his palms. 

He turned to look up at Chan and Chan watched something like apprehension ripple across his expression for only the briefest moment before he wound his arms around Jeongin’s shoulders and pulled him into a hug. 

“Christ _alive_ , I thought I was gonna lose it. You weren’t texting me and I couldn’t find you anywhere—” 

Chan pulled back and looked down at Jeongin, then all over his face, trying even out his breaths and contend with all the worry that he’d let stack up for hours. God, he felt stupid for it, but it was fucking insanity how easy it was to let himself get carried away.

Jeongin looked embarrassed but Chan had already forgiven him. He let him go and ruffled his hair with both hands, pressing out a little laugh because he might as well have been embarrassed too. 

“My phone died,” Jeongin croaked, and Chan nodded his head, trying to blink the rest of the anxiety that had compounded over the last few hours out of his eyes so he could reorient his whole sense of purpose back to something less abstract. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah, and…” Jeongin paused to scoot his chair back and stand up, stepping away from the table situated next to the brick wall of what looked like a storage room to reveal his phone. It was plugged into an outlet, laying on the floor. 

“Well, it’s charged now,” he rushed, “but it died right after I told you I was going to check out that toy shop. Then the fucking mall closed, and,” he sighed and stooped over to unplug the charging block, wrapping the cable around his fingers as he talked, “I went outside cause I couldn’t find you, and then I guess… I wanted to charge my phone before I went looking for you so I just went inside the first store I could find on this street, I asked an employee if there were any outlets, she said this was the only one, then I fucking fell asleep.” 

“At least you didn’t have to go far to find an outlet,” Chan offered, to try and smooth out the wrinkles that were forming between Jeongin’s brow. 

“And, look, you’re safe, and… well, that’s all that really matters, huh? You might’ve really needed that nap anyway.” 

Jeongin smirked, then let himself laugh, then shook his head and stuffed the cable and phone into each of their own jacket pockets. 

“Hyung, you looked like you were seconds from bursting a blood vessel only minutes ago. Don’t you feel at least a _little_ inclined to scold—me…” 

Jeongin’s smile fell away as his eyes slowly pulled away from Chan’s and stilled on something just past his head. 

“Scold you…?” Chan asked, before he craned his head around and found out who Jeongin was looking at. 

Black puffer, blonde ponytail? All of a sudden getting a bit red, and fiddling with his bag strap when he realized nobody expected him to still be standing there. 

From afar it was really noticeable, how he stood out in long, supermodel lines against the pink and white backdrop of the sweets arcade. Chan should’ve thanked him, of course, before he left and kept doing whatever it is he came here to do, but… he hadn’t left. Chan glanced at Jeongin before slowly opening his mouth. 

“It’s alright,” the stranger quickly said, waving a hand then toying with the strap of his bag again. 

“Don’t worry about it, um…” 

“What’s your name?” Chan asked. His voice was hoarse so he swallowed as inconspicuously as he could and shifted his weight to another foot. He was feeling that knot of cables in his head starting to tighten. 

“Hyunjin,” he replied, smiling a little. His shoulders still looked tight. 

“Hyunjin,” Chan parroted. 

Black puffer, blonde ponytail, was Hyunjin. 

“Hyunjin,” Chan cleared his throat and tried not to stare anymore at Hyunjin’s face. 

“Can I—can I… t-text? You. Or… call you? I- guess…?” 

Hyunjin brightened immediately, and his ponytail bounce-bounced as he nodded his head. 

If someone were to take a stethoscope to Chan’s skull in that moment to try and get some insight on what exactly he was thinking, they’d hear absolutely nothing but _wow_ , reverberating off the walls inside.

Chan fumbled to take out his phone before Hyunjin reached him, pulling up the _New Contact_ screen right as Hyunjin got close enough to reach out a slender hand. 

As Hyunjin was typing Chan realized for the first time how many gold rings Hyunjin had on, and he had on a whole lot, stacked. He noticed the pale baby blue all of his fingernails had been painted. The muffled sound of metal bracelets came jingling from out the opening of his sleeves, and then Chan was sliding his gaze up to Hyunjin’s ears. Pierced and full of mixed metals, blacks and steel and gold. 

“I don’t have many Korean friends here,” Hyunjin’s voice cut through Chan’s thoughts seconds before he could chance a look at what jewelry Hyunjin might’ve been wearing around his neck. Chan met his eyes but not for very long, feeling the wildfire in his cheeks that wouldn’t stop fucking burning sink a little deeper than the top layers of his skin. 

“so when I met you, and… saw your brother, I guess I got excited.” 

_Excited_. 

As if he was psychic, Jeongin’s elbow suddenly jutted into Chan’s side. 

“ _Yeah_ ,” Chan’s voice cracked, “yeah,” he corrected, “we’re here for university, grad and undergrad. We both just started our first semester in Kyoto, I’m studying children’s nutrition and he’s—” 

“Film production,” Jeongin finished. He took Chan’s phone back when Hyunjin held it out and put it in one of his own pockets. 

“Well. I hope I’ll see you later. Get home safe, and… don’t lose each other again.” 

They all laughed, but Chan was the only one awkwardly raking a hand through his hair, which he hadn’t realized he started doing until Jeongin curled a hand around his arm. Yeah, he was fairly certain he was the only one just then who couldn’t reign in the nervous tic for five seconds, but he didn’t have time to grieve before Hyunjin was waving at the two of them and starting to walk away. 

Long lines, bouncy ponytail. Chan couldn’t think of anything to describe the way Hyunjin’s mouth looked when he smiled. 

He watched the back of him go until it disappeared into the jungle of arcade machines, and instantly, it was like the only way he’d ever existed in Chan’s memory was bathed in bright pink and white lights, his voice nearly drowned out by the sounds of the arcade, candy peeking out the top of his fancy looking bag. Decked out in shiny metal jewelry that made the flint rocks in Chan’s stomach clatter together, because there was nothing else in the _world_ like the way it’d brought out all the soft shapes in Hyunjin’s face. And his long, blonde hair. 

He felt Jeongin move beside him and was catapulted back into reality at once. The sweet, cakey smell coming from that area of the arcade felt like a punch directly in the face. 

“Didn’t see him when I came in here… must’ve walked in after.” 

Chan blinked, then messed with his hair a little more, then nodded his head towards the outdoor exit and tried to expel all the fucking troubles of today in one huge gust of air. All the red in his face, all the entryways it had to melt into the cracks of his very vulnerable bones. Losing Jeongin, meeting Hyunjin. 

_Losing_ Jeongin. _Meeting_ Hyunjin.

_Fixate on something else_ , _Chris_ , he heard Changbin saying. 

_Something... unprovocative_? 

“Yeah… I got lucky. He was the first person I walked up to and he spoke Korean.” 

“ _Sheesh_ ,” Jeongin said, following Chan’s lead as they weaved their way back through the machines. The thought of running into Hyunjin again did start humming against Chan’s skull, but if he was being honest, the smell of the arcade was overpowering enough to make the experience of tracing his steps back through it more nauseating than pleasant. 

Chan felt a tap on his arm when they finally stepped outside and he turned to find Jeongin holding out his phone, which Chan took, remembering what it looked like in Hyunjin’s hands with a resurrected flush. 

“When you text him, can you ask him if I can have his number too?” 

Chan wrapped an arm around Jeongin’s shoulder and tried to will away the heat crowding out his sensibility while he put in the directions to the nearest train station. 

“Yeah, Jeongin, of course I can.” 

**Hwang Hyunjin ^^**

**Text Message**

**Today** 12:10 AM

hi, hyunjin, this is chan.

i’m really, really sorry about the way we 

had to meet today. 

i’ll make it up to you! 

i swear.

**Delivered**

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. othello

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he was insecure, indecisive, or just impulsive, a lot of the time Felix ended up having to be content with patting Hyunjin’s back from the other side of the plexiglass. 
> 
> \--  
> meet hyunlix

**Chan**

**Monday** 11:13 PM

You said you would make it up to me!

attachment: clubcamelot.jp/en/

Bring your friends and I’ll bring mine

  
  


The front of Hyunjin’s hair was falling in nice, silky curtains when Felix finally lifted the brush away from it. Staying away from the pink hair chalk was always the better move on longer nights out, when a sweaty, disheveled hairline felt inevitable at the end of an outing, and Hyunjin was prone to messing with it. 

Putting the brush back down onto the work desk that doubled as their vanity, Felix looked up at their reflections in the low light and carded his fingers through Hyunjin’s hair. 

“Did you say you wanted buns?” 

“No, I change my mind. I think I should go with half-up half-down.” 

Felix clicked his tongue. 

For how fashion-forward Hyunjin claimed to be, he always found it a lot easier to err on the side of classical styling when he was trying to make new friends. It was easy to act like Felix knew anything about all the new people who never made another appearance in Hyunjin’s life after the first few, however, so he digressed. 

Hyunjin had been living by himself in Japan for a lot longer than Felix had, whereas Felix was only in Japan for a few weeks before he met Hyunjin. So Felix figured he had a lot of odd habits to act as stand-ins, for the pre-Felix memories he didn’t really talk about. 

“Okay,” Felix said. He quickly smiled at Hyunjin in the mirror and fixed his expression to appease an argument before Hyunjin could start one. 

“I just… think…”

Felix reached past him to start picking through Hyunjin’s hair supply boxes at the left of the desk, far more substantial than Felix’s and standing at three plastic containers high. Felix got used to navigating through them since he started using half of what was inside. 

“You think Chan’s friends won’t like it?” Felix offered, picking out bright red barrettes and hairpins in one hand and some black hair ties in the other. Hyunjin rolled his eyes and scoffed, reaching for his mug of warm water and shochu— _gross_ —before taking a swig then patting at his glossy lips with his ring finger. 

“I don’t know, but I don’t think I care about that. Not about what Chan or his friends think, I mean. If what he wears tells me anything about what they wear.” 

That _would_ sound about right, if Hyunjin hadn’t backed out of trying something new when he was faced with making good second-impressions before. 

Felix felt like he was still left reeling sometimes with how urgently Hyunjin would switch on a dime before a party, especially because Felix couldn’t always anticipate it before he got hit with the shrapnel. Hyunjin never really left any opens, and seemed indifferent about Felix’s hesitation to pry. There wasn’t enough hard evidence in any one area of his behavior to make an assumption worth talking about, or maybe Felix just hadn’t known Hyunjin long enough. 

If he was insecure, indecisive, or just impulsive, a lot of the time Felix ended up having to be content with patting Hyunjin’s back from the other side of the plexiglass. 

Felix laughed under his breath and began gently separating the sections of hair that would be pulled back from the sections of hair that would stay loose. He opened the hairpins with his teeth and gathered up blonde hair in all the places it would escape from the ponytail first, pinning them down so they’d blend into the longer gathered pieces before he put it all up. 

“So you just think what? Since Chan’s opinion on your hair doesn’t count.” 

It was a losing battle to expect a clear answer that indicated anything, and as expected Hyunjin gave a noncommittal shrug. 

“Half-up half-down always looks good.” 

Like something you’d write at the end of a report when there’s nothing left to say so you say anything to try and expend time. 

Felix pulled the ponytail taut, then pet the long fringe framing each side of Hyunjin’s face. He met Hyunjin’s eyes in the mirror, and wondered how irises so black and so unfinishing revealed so little about all the things they were ever feeling and all the people they’d ever seen. 

  
  


Felix chose to live with Hyunjin almost four months ago, and in between his apprenticeship at the studio and waiting restaurant tables, in four months Felix let Hyunjin, channeling everything he’d learned since living in Japan, mold him into one of the best versions of himself with his bare hands. 

The right way Felix should enunciate his words in the workplace, because Japanese customer service was so specific and unparalleled, and how to smoothly navigate nightlife before and after the night’s over, because the more centralized your activities were to Tokyo the more exhaustive the list of things to avoid became. 

How to style himself in women’s clothing, because it looked good and felt better, and soothed the stinging in his brain when Felix thought about his own identity. Felix hadn’t touched eye makeup, only ever stared at it, until he met Hyunjin. Felix would’ve never considered growing his hair out past the bottoms of his ears, and yet now had a formidable mullet in the works, because he met Hyunjin. 

All of this, and when Felix called his mom after his first month in Japan, to gush about his roommate and his superhero-like persona, the larger-than-life Hwang Hyunjin—gorgeous, savvy, stylish, and personable—he didn’t know what to answer when his mom asked about who Hyunjin was. 

Who Hyunjin _really_ was. 

What had all come before Felix, that made him the Hyunjin Felix met. And, what happened in-between Felix, that made him the Hyunjin he didn’t project. 

Why he didn’t go to school and didn’t talk about work outside of dance. Didn’t have any other close friends but always wanted to meet new people. 

Why he was in Japan. Where in Korea he was from.

Why he never mentioned close family or distant relatives, but liked to talk about his old pet dog. 

Why he jumped head-first into some things, trivial things, risky little things, like hairstyles and outfits, then pulled back out just as fast, and never accordingly explained.

Was Felix just an open book? He lost count of how many times Hyunjin changed his mind about a look, right before they went out to go meet somebody, and he couldn’t learn anything useful from the pattern of behavior because it didn’t make a pattern to Felix, it just alluded to the existence of one. 

“Everything looks good if it’s on you,” Felix said, and meant it. 

Maybe Hyunjin just took his time opening all the way up, which would be just fine. Waiting until Hyunjin was comfortable enough to start explaining more about himself on his own was the least Felix could do. 

The blond rolled his eyes, for a second time or the millionth, and smiled. 

His two front teeth peeked out from between his lips in the same way they did the moment Felix had realized that Hyunjin might’ve been beautiful, and mysterious, but at the forefront of it all, Hyunjin was insurmountably precious. When his expression softened up and he giggled or grinned, Felix remembered that this was his friend—one of his _best_ friends—Hwang Hyunjin, who radiated milky sweet warmth like a kitten, and was the first person who ever saw Felix wear a dress and say he “ _looked as pretty as a garden fairy_ ”. 

Felix scrunched his nose at Hyunjin in the mirror, then clipped the red barrettes to each upper corner of Hyunjin’s bangs to try and emphasize the young and sporty look they were going for that night. Not that it would matter, according to Hyunjin, but it was charming nonetheless, and the cherry red helped frame Hyunjin’s face like a picture. 

As Felix adjusted his black beanie and then all the gold jewelry around his neck, Hyunjin picked up his phone and tapped through to Chan while taking a few more big gulps of his alcohol. 

“Did he confirm who all’s coming with him?” Felix gently took the mug from Hyunjin’s hand and downed his own couple swigs, cringing when he pulled away at how sincerely _nasty_ room-temp alcohol tasted, unmixed at that. 

“Yeah. He said Jeongin for sure can’t come and he’s being pretty vague about the rest, so just the Changbin guy I guess.” 

Felix nodded and joined Hyunjin in the mirror to make any last corrections on their matching makeup, all subdued brown tones on their eyes to bring out the natural shape, and dewy moisturizer with faint blush concentrated in the center of their faces. Hyunjin explained that dressed-up athleisure is always a go-to when you don't know who you’re going to be partying with, which meant a light hand with makeup and clothing. The strobes and sounds of a club are enough of a spectacle, you don’t need them to mix with a wild outfit and create a painful rainbow phantasm for everybody else around you. 

“Did that shochu do anything for you?” Hyunjin asked on the way to the door, kicking off his house slippers to stoop over and put on his tennis shoes. 

It was a lot cheaper to get a little drunk before going out to a club, but Felix only remembered to take one shot before he started drinking Hyunjin’s alcohol, so at that very moment his head felt fairly clear. 

“Nah, but I didn’t drink much,” he said, sliding his feet into his own tennis shoes before offering a hand to help Hyunjin put on his short-sleeved blazer. 

After grabbing their bags Hyunjin paused, and it was right then, under the dull light of the genkan, Felix saw all the nerves Hyunjin couldn’t keep from bleeding out of him. They trickled out all the unchecked cracks in Hyunjin’s eyes. 

It was always more raw than Felix expected, because Hyunjin had been through this at least a million times. His mouth pulled into a vague frown, and it was always close to harrowing how small and temporal the wrinkles forming on his chin and brow made him look. 

There was something he wasn’t saying, something that must’ve scared him every time. Or something that scared him once into a lifetime of fear. 

As the anxiety pooled in Hyunjin’s expression, he still didn’t say anything. Felix, with his heart aching, contended with the silence. 

“Do you... want to drink more?” Felix asked, softly, wiggling a hand into Hyunjin’s and bringing it up to his cheek when Hyunjin gave him a squeeze. They could get blasted before meeting Chan and Changbin for all Felix cared. 

After another chapter of silence, more abbreviated the second time around, Hyunjin pressed his lips into a little smile then shook his head. For the briefest moment, Felix felt him look right through him, like he was tracing the steps back to a thought that Felix had no part of. 

“Nah,” he finally said, the present falling back into his eyes. 

“You look cute, by the way.” 

Felix chose to be fine with this a long time ago. 

He grinned and took in a deep breath of air, blowing out when Hyunjin turned back towards the door and tugged on their entwined hands. 

“ _You_ look cute, by the way. Don’t forget to tell Chan we’re on our way out!” 

Stepping out into the hallway, Hyunjin pulled his phone back out as he gathered Felix into an arm and pulled back up his and Chan’s messages. 

  
  
  


**Chan**

**Today** 12:10 AM

On our way to the station! 

Be there in like 20.

 **Read** 12:11 AM

  
  
  
  



	3. my monster with a mistress is in love!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dancing was suddenly for Felix now. For Chan and Hyunjin a little, but mostly for Felix now. 
> 
> He was floating as he held Changbin’s hand. His silvery bangs reflected the club lights and in the long-exposure of Changbin’s dizzy vision, the colors created a little romantic crown on his head that was made of glass. 
> 
> -  
> felix finally meets chan and hyunjin finally meets changbin. most of all, though, is that changbin meets felix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a long one but changbin is a pretentious psychology major and has a lot to say so yknow !

Changbin was never one to shy away from a nightclub, but did an alleged group of four, whose common denominator was one nervous, overworked, sweaty Bang Chan, really need to kindle some kind of network among themselves in such a weirdly high-stakes environment?

Like, was it necessary to try and make their get-together more than what it actually was.

The nearly 30 minute walk from the station to Park Avenue was almost shockingly quiet, and near-silence still prevailed even after they got there. It only started to make a little more sense when Changbin realized almost every building in the surrounding area was residential. There was an elementary school right across the street. 

The front door of “Club Camelot” was squished into the wall of an alleyway, sidled up to what Changbin’s phone said was a local fabric store, and the queque wasn’t that long either, so even after standing in line under the overhanging Club Camelot threshold there was a general hush that made Changbin feel out of place on a Saturday night. 

Coming as a mild assuage to the itchiness in his ass, every time the door swung open to funnel another cluster of people inside, Changbin could hear the low bump and rumble of music and a crowd reaching up from the underground. 

He sighed and rolled his neck and shoulders. The sign did say Club Camelot, didn’t it?

For half of the walk over there, Chan had been picking up his phone and messing with his beanie in the front camera. Unsurprisingly, his ministrations started getting more erratic when they got in line, even more so after every time the club door opened and closed. 

“I think there’s only one way to wear that hat, Chris,” Changbin said after a minute more of Chan’s beanie-adjusting. 

Changbin had known Chan long enough to have permanently committed all of his self-soothing behaviors in his reflexive memory, front to back and up to down, and he also knew him long enough to know how often Chan would let himself forget that fact. 

That being said, Changbin knew Chan couldn’t control how or when his combination of clinical anxieties might rear their heads—not by a long, _long_ shot—but Changbin would never let Chan fall too far into himself. He hadn’t in the past, he wouldn’t that night. He’d seen the way small stuff could rapidly snowball with complete reckless abandon, so when Chan started getting antsy, Changbin coaxed him back off the edge of his own thoughts.

Chan tugged on the beanie one last time before shaking his head with a centering huff, and putting away his phone. He shot Changbin one of his sheepish smiles that read like self-depreciation. Changbin quickly wanted to soothe it, sending Chan a kinder smile in return. 

“Next time we’ll just kick back at my place, ‘kay? I think a nightclub is a little overkill too.” 

He clasped a hand over Chan’s shoulder then gave it a squeeze. He was surprised when Chan shook his head again and then looked up at Changbin, or attempted to, sideways and in an awkward, funny way, not quite meeting his eyes. 

“No, uh,” he laughed a little, and Changbin watched as a flush started rising to his white cheeks in mismatched red blotches. 

“Um, well... you’re right, but, not completely.” 

Well, consider Changbin intrigued. 

A few more steps forward, and the two of them finally arrived at the swinging glass door. Changbin reached past Chan and tugged it back open before it could close all the way, having let in the group of kids who’d been in front of Changbin and Chan when they were still in the line. Distantly, Changbin couldn’t deny the smallest swell of excitement that shuddered through him like the one he sensed in the group of kids once the two of them stepped into the tiny yellowish threshold. 

“Not completely?” Changbin asked, pulling his attention back to Chan and gesturing for him to walk in front. 

The hallway was narrow, definitely couldn’t accommodate the width of two grown men shoulder-to-shoulder, so Changbin broke them into a single file not unlike a claustrophobic lunch line. It was a straight shot until they reached the top of an equally narrow stairwell that, when Changbin leaned over Chan’s shoulder to peek at it, looked like it genuinely dropped straight into the gates of Hell. Darkness and red light was waiting at the bottom of the stairs and everything, shifting around ominously like lake water at dusk.

Alright, cool cool cool.

“Yeah, sure, I mean, clubs are overwhelming, right,” Chan started again.

“‘Cause, like, I don’t go often, I guess...” his voice softened as he trailed off—a little too off, and Changbin jerked his head up to roll his eyes. He punched the top of Chan’s arm as they began their trot down the stairs. Chan always managed to stumble over his own brain right at the worst moment. 

“So?” Changbin pressed, “What is it? So we can nip it in the bud, man. So I don’t have to watch you fix that beanie for the millionth fucking time.” 

Honestly, the flip from pure nervous energy to pure nervous excitement in Chan was a welcome change, for sure, and it warmed Changbin’s heart, but Changbin was kinda imagining they’d figure it all out before they reached the dance floor. 

“It’s Hyunjin,” Chan said with a gust of air.

“Bin, I-” when they rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs Chan suddenly stopped. He probably didn’t mean to, but Changbin’s face collided with his back anyway, and whether it was an accident or not, all of Changbin’s nose still received the brunt of it. 

“ _Chan_ ,” he hissed, then whipped his head around to glance behind himself towards the stairwell. He hoped there wasn’t an unfortunate caboose getting trapped behind them, but, luckily, stretching all the way back to the piss-yellow stairwell, there wasn’t any sign of another round of partygoers and instead just a dark, empty hallway. 

“What about Hyunjin?” he asked, turning back to Chan while bringing a hand up to rub the bridge of his nose.

He was looking all over Chan’s face, nosing around his expression with his eyes to see if he could get an answer any faster that way. In the low red lights, he wasn’t quite sure if Chan’s cheeks were starting to get blotchier. 

Yeah, what about Hyunjin. The Hyunjin at the sweets arcade who helped Chan find Jeongin, the same Hyunjin who had cobbled together that night’s club excursion—and tried to get everybody else in Chan’s inner circle involved for whatever reason, but that was a gripe for another day.

Changbin couldn’t think of a different one.

Chan hadn’t said much else concerning the guy besides the Jeongin fiasco to Changbin since the night of the Jeongin fiasco, which had left Changbin to try and conceive of the guy at any level aside from maybe extroverted and a hallucination, all on his own. 

But, apparently, Chan suddenly remembered something tonight. 

Chan opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, and while watching him Changbin wasn’t really feeling any less like he was trying to solve a math problem without having any numbers. That was, until he watched Chan’s hand as it left his side then reached around his head, stopping just underneath the edge of his beanie to fiddle with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

“ _Oh_ -” Changbin’s mouth fell open.

The realization knocked him on his ass like he’d taken a professional kickboxer to his brain. 

“You think he’s cute?”

—Changbin could not shoulder _all_ of the blame for taking so long to catch on. 

In recent years it’d become way too easy to forget that Chan could ever want to do more in the way of romance than just talk to somebody once then convince himself he had a million other higher priorities and never talk to that person again.

Changbin had been convinced his best friend’s unspoken philosophy since starting medical school was that crushes required a person’s complete monopoly on time. When there were only so many hours in a day, romance became a misplaced effort, and even more so for Chan, extraneous stress. Because he had enough emotional work as it was, worrying himself sick about his graduate courses and babying a 19 year old to death. That wasn’t even mentioning the self-directed music side career he was trying to get up off the ground, which Changbin thought might’ve been a great creative outlet if Chan hadn’t taken himself so seriously at the jump when he had one foot barely in the door. 

Chan’d buried himself so deep in the dregs of self-sabotage, Changbin started to believe he wouldn’t be able to afford the prices of commitment even if the time came when he actually wanted to. 

So, sue Changbin for having his grey matter knock around on his brain stem like a speed bag while he grappled with the realization. 

Continuing to stare at him, Changbin didn’t need a more firm confirmation of Chan’s crush on Hyunjin than the funny look that started to manifest across his face. He shifted through all five stages of grief in what couldn’t have been more than a few brief seconds as his gaze moved back and forth between the floor and somewhere on Changbin’s shirt, every single expression filtered through his on-brand fidgety embarrassment.

On that note, perhaps Changbin could find himself slightly more agreeable to that night’s weirdly high-stakes. 

His dependability as one of Chan’s closest confidants would be on the front line now, which was a very pleasant feeling that sat high in Changbin’s chest and gave him a nice, corny sense of purpose. He’d need to dust off his wingman abilities he put away, after he’d resigned to preserving them for Jeongin, and have them ready to quick-draw again from his holster at a moment’s notice, like a retired sheriff in a spaghetti western.

He was shaping up to have a night of respectable work ahead indeed, and it wasn’t anything Changbin wasn’t prepared to handle.

Chan, however... 

Well, Jesus. 

This was what being somebody’s best friend was all about, wasn’t it.

Changbin laughed good-naturedly and clapped a hand against Chan’s back to subliminally tempt him to start walking again.

He was feeling warmer, a little proud. He’d wished he’d known sooner, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Changbin couldn’t even begin to try and sort out why Chan chose tonight to finally say something to him—and better yet, why Chan chose Hyunjin, and if he was being honest, he wasn’t really sure if Chan could sort it out himself either. 

Onwards and upwards, he’d once heard somewhere before. If Hyunjin’s “we’re at the bar!!” text Chan showed him earlier was anything to go by, they probably wouldn’t be running into him, or his friend for that matter, standing around causing a traffic jam in the hallway. 

“Hey, man. What am I here for,” he said. 

“Don’t sweat it, I got your back.” 

Pushing open one last set of doors—heavy black doors that were probably made of steel and nearly pushed Changbin back—the flood of music and voices washed away everything that wasn’t centralized to the interior of the club.

The lights didn’t quite reach them around the short wall the two of them had come in behind, but the effect of the club was persistent even without them. Music and noise pumped all the way through Changbin’s body, through the access point of his skin. Just past the carpeted wall, there was a sea of dark purples and reds that doused everyone and everything that swam around it in color.

Changbin had to admit, after the anticlimactic journey to finally reach the actual interior of the club, something about being swallowed by the gulf of its ecosystem sent a thrill shooting up his spine, and he briefly considered how well he was gonna choose to handle himself when he got his hands on some alcohol. Well enough of course to be the best damn wingman Chan and Hyunjin and Hyunjin’s friend had ever goddamn seen, but maybe not well enough to fight off getting a little rhythm in him and going out onto the dancefloor. 

Changbin watched as Chan tugged on his beanie one last time before he pushed past him and out into the lights, and what was probably the “general vip area” Chan insisted the two of them split the cost for.

To his immediate right, a row of raised red booths snugly lined a glass wall, and across from the booths to his left was a massive round bar lined with stools and people, and a smattering of square stand-up tables next to that.

Every color and defining shape of a person Changbin had to discern through a thick layer of purple and fuschia, so even if he knew exactly what he was looking for, he probably wouldn’t know if he’d seen it already. He squinted and uselessly looked at the bar. 

“Are they gonna come find us, or? Do they know where we are?” 

Changbin turned back to Chan as he yelled over the noise, finding him peering at his phone screen, likely looking to it for his answer. 

Changbin hummed and turned away, back towards the inside of the club and at the bodies swimming through its space. The clustering seemed to thicken into a decent crowd when the cozier section of the club opened up into a dance floor headed by a small stage. Nobody was performing, but there were people poking away at what looked like a DJ setup, so Changbin wiggled his hands into his pockets and secretly looked forward to that. 

“Chan?” 

Changbin just barely heard it, but it was definitely there, and he definitely hadn’t said it. He whipped his head around at the same time as Chan, and at once, his stomach dropped straight into his ass. 

The two men approaching looked like fucking mirages. Like effervescent specters of every top modeling agency’s wet dreams, especially in the light. 

Changbin immediately wanted to look at Chan, wanted Chan to look at him, and confirm to him, indubitably, with some semblance of reality, that the two people walking up to them right now were actually Hyunjin and Hyunjin’s friend. 

_Hyunjin’s friend_ , Changbin thought with a sudden cold sweat. 

This whole time Changbin hadn’t bothered to remember his fucking name. 

“Sorry we weren’t at the booth, we were getting drinks,” the taller one said when he arrived in front of them, holding up a martini glass in one big, decked-out hand. Changbin’s gaze snapped up to his face the second the tall one turned to him—like it was the universe’s silent order. Like he no longer had the option to look anywhere else but right back at the tall one the moment he expected his attention, with his long blond hair and his foxish eyes. 

“Changbin, I presume?” 

Changbin could tell he was straining to speak above the noise of the club when he happened to look at his throat and catch the veins in his long neck bulge. Not that Changbin had been staring at his neck, but, not that he didn’t exactly want to. Changbin met his eyes again and gave his very best smile—in the new company he suddenly found himself way too aware of how he did it—before shortly bowing his head. 

“Yeah, that’s me. It’s really nice to—“

His words jumbled against the inside of his mouth and vanished from the front of his thoughts when he spared a glance at the shorter one. A flush thrashed to life under Changbin’s skin that he hadn’t imagined he’d be getting until he was at least 6 shots in.

Changbin had always considered himself _tentatively_ bisexual. _Tentatively_ picking women and men, if only because another person’s pronouns didn’t always bar the odds of his own sexual attraction. 

That being said, however, knitted into the very fibers of Changbin’s soul, he was an absolute fool for softness. 

He liked bunnies and kittens and lovely small things he could hold, driven by an almost primal urge within him to cherish them and protect. He liked soft contours and soft cruxes, soft skin and soft hair. Soft fingers and delicate lips and gentle eyes and sweet smells. 

Maybe the lights were messing with him, obscuring the possibility of something terrible like perfumes did with a funk, but, feeling assured by the sound of his pulse thrumming louder in his head than the music was, he decided he was definitely, definitely, attracted to Hyunjin’s friend. 

“You’re…?” 

Hyunjin piped up, making a face when Changbin jerkily looked up at him and away from the boy standing half-behind him. He couldn’t tear his eyes away for very long, though. If Hyunjin was magnetic attraction, his friend was a whole solar system’s worth of his own gravitational pull.

“This must be, um,” Changbin said, not really to Hyunjin and perhaps to his pretty friend. 

Looking prompted, the boy stepped out from behind the square mass of Hyunjin’s big blazer, and smiled. The skin around his pretty eyes wrinkled cutely, and Changbin was a fool. 

Christ in Heaven, his smile was divine. 

Not a centimeter of gums, only a row of whites that looked pinkish under the light, and full candy apple lips that were stretched out around them. Filled up so much of his face with the extent of its effect, crescent-mooning his lovely eyes and rounding out his cheeks like dough.

“Sorry, hi! I thought you were, um, saying something-”

“No, no, you go ahead, please.” 

His voice was miles deeper than Hyunjin’s, and Changbin’s, and Chan’s, and yet despite Changbin easily hearing him without fighting against the club noise for it, the boy still leaned towards him a little when he spoke. It was cute, and Changbin’s fingers twitched as he watched him and imagined gently holding his waist to help him keep his balance.

“I’m Felix! Hyunjin didn’t really tell me a lot about you guys, just that he was excited for tonight.” 

“Chan didn’t tell me anything either,” Changbin quickly said. 

In fact, he’d gotten told so little about everyone up until tonight, he thought maybe meeting up at a club and not knowing a single thing about the people he was meeting was actually the whole gimmick. However, with every unveiling of bits and pieces of information, Changbin felt less and less inclined to be as cynical about everything as he had been at the start. 

Maybe it was an unnecessary comparison, but this was kind of starting to feel like a blind double-date.

“Well, Hyunjin didn’t tell me anything either,” Chan squawked, then immediately looked like he regretted it. Changbin tried to laugh a little to ease the zest of Chan’s delivery, reaching out a hand to pat his shoulder like they were both in on a joke. 

“W-well, I mean,” Chan needlessly corrected, “not that he had to, or anything-” 

“Let’s sit down,” Hyunjin cut in, appearing completely unmoved by Chan’s fumbling and smiling very sweetly at him. 

He held Felix’s hand and pulled him along as he walked, effectively leading everyone like a pack of dogs. More optimistically, like tonight’s host, but he did seem deservingly charismatic.

Or maybe just enigmatic enough that three grown people didn’t instinctively keep pace with him.

Changbin digressed, and slowed down a bit to assure he was out of earshot before tugging on Chan’s sleeve and leaning into his ear.

“He’s cute.” 

Chan nodded his head, and Changbin wanted to tease him for the giant smile that materialized instantaneously on his face. He opened his mouth to say something back, but Hyunjin and Felix slid into their booth, Hyunjin with a yelp, and Chan only nodded again, looking commanded by the same law of the universe Changbin had obeyed when the blond asked for his attention earlier before. 

It was super adorable, despite the hard mass its unfamiliarity had taken the form of. Changbin was going to start chipping away at that tonight, though, and not just for Chan, but for himself as well. He wanted to know Hyunjin, drop-dead gorgeous Hyunjin, who’d had his best friend’s number for weeks, and spent every single one of them divulging all of absolutely nothing. 

And maybe Changbin would be blasted for the first half, but that was a problem future Changbin was going to deal with. 

Hyunjin didn’t set down his martini as he reached over and passed out the drink menus, the liquid in his cup sloshing precariously close to the edge while Hyunjin was being generous when nobody asked him to. There was a dim white light over their booth that thinned the purple and pink haze across Hyunjin’s face just enough for Changbin to wonder how drunk he was already, because he definitely wasn’t sober. 

“They have the best calpis sour here,” he gushed, Felix nodding next to him and Chan leaning over the table rapt. 

“Ask them to mix it with a little bit of lime soda, oh my God, it’s so good.” 

“Where is it on the menu?” Chan asked, picking up the laminated column of paper. 

Hyunjin finished off his drink then stood up to point, tapping with a manicured finger. Changbin turned over his own menu and located the list of chuhai and sours. 

A pair of big, beautiful brown eyes fell on Changbin, and he knew it for certain because he'd been staring at them first.

Felix was a little secret garden in his corner of the booth. He bloomed prettily on his own, and when he was spoken to it was like he had life itself to give. 

Changbin felt so fucking red when Felix tilted his head at him, the cutest variation of “what is it?” that Changbin had ever seen. 

Changbin just smiled at him, then shoveled his nose as far as he could back into his laminated drinks menu. 

“I’m only ordering strong shit for the rest of the night,” Hyunjin declared. 

Felix turned his head to look at him, then reached out a hand to pet the lapel of Hyunjin’s blazer, suddenly embodying a deep expression that Changbin couldn’t place despite his immediate compulsion to try to.

Hyunjin didn’t like to tell anybody about himself, and Changbin realized as he tore his gaze away from the spot where Felix touched him that that fact sure made it easy for Hyunjin to, say, already be in a relationship with his cute roommate. And make sure nobody would know. 

“I’m starting with the strong shit,” Changbin said, perhaps a bit too petulantly, because he knew he didn't have the right to feel one way or another about shit that wasn't any of his business, but he felt one way or another anyway. Hyunjin only giggled, though, and threw his arms up and cheered, wiggling his fists and making his jewelry jingle. 

“Good! It’ll loosen you up for some dancingggg!” 

The highest alcohol percentage any of them could get was 37%, but enough 70/30 sochu mixed with cherry Sprite and Changbin eventually had to take off his leather jacket and keep one arm on the table to prevent himself from swaying and embarrassing himself. 

All of them were drinking like champions, but in the back of the unsteady ship of his brain, Changbin thought out of all of them he was probably the only one that wasn’t doing it to make talking easier. Fuck, he just liked being fucked up, but he did end up joining in on gradually getting noisier anyway, his face hurting from the stupid grin he couldn’t put away. 

Hyunjin was standing again—he sure did that a lot—gesticulating with his long limbs as he tried to guess where Chan was from. It arose from a conversation about how he and Chan met, and how shocked he was when Chan started speaking English to him with an accent. 

“Think warmer,” Chan said. Now that he was drunk the hearts practically leaked from his puffy black eyes and he looked up at Hyunjin like he was looking at the stars.

“So nowhere in Europe,” Felix laughed, and the lovely, squeaky sound filled up another inch of Changbin’s chest. Alright, he’d admit, he wasn’t any better off than Chan and he’d only known Felix for a couple of hours, compared to Chan’s more robust few weeks.

Their gazes kept colliding against each other, and it wasn’t as if the both of them weren’t literally participating in a conversation and Felix was singling him out, but Changbin just couldn’t help himself. Every time Felix locked him in, for just a few seconds in his doe-eyed stare, Changbin felt himself spiritually rejuvenate. Seriously. 

“O-kay, nowhere in Europe, so my question is why the fuck did he sound European?” Hyunjin huffed, crossing his arms. 

He was well-drunk too, Changbin could make out the flush on him that practically rivalled Chan’s, but Changbin and Chan and Felix’d had so much shit to say about themselves that Hyunjin had still smoothly weaseled his way out of saying anything himself. 

Changbin had the rest of his fucking life to figure it all out, but it’d become irritating that Hyunjin chose to hoard such stupid information. Like where he worked, what the fuck? 

“A lot of European-looking people sound like him, maybe that’s what’s throwing you off,” Changbin said, Chan nodding with agreement. 

“I don’t know what that means ,” Hyunjin said. He was pouting with his full lips, which made him look like the absolute picture of sex appeal, and reached for his mixed drink to gulp down a monstrous amount.

Some of it dripped out the corner of his mouth, and it almost looked enticing, like Changbin could wipe it off for him, but Changbin quickly looked over at Chan and Felix to remind himself of why he wasn’t going to stare like that anymore. Why he was going to try. 

“It means, like, generally caucasian people are associated with that place. Like, you think of it and you don't think, 'oh, I know a Korean guy from there'.” Changbin watched Felix genuinely trying to curate his words precicely. 

He and Chan already learned about the one in a million chance that they were both Korean-born students, raised in the same country, from the same city, and happened to be in Kyoto Japan at the same time, and then proceeded to befriend one another. It all had happened in silent conspiracy and it had been genuinely hilarious, their winks and nods at each other as they acknowledged it’d go right over a drunk Hyunjin’s head—definitely not a sober one—and he’d actually be playing one versus three. 

“Couldn’t you say that about any place?” Hyunjin asked. 

“Maybe not Africa.” 

“Well is he from fucking Africa?” 

Felix laughed some more, his nose wrinkled as he threw his head back. 

“Where in Africa would he be from? I thought we were naming countries not continents?” 

The quip made everyone erupt into laughter, and even over the sound of the club, Changbin could hear every voice. Even Hyunjin’s, who leaned onto the table with his hands and had a cackle like a hyena’s. 

Changbin wiped the sweat from exertion off his lip with the back of his hand and reached for his fifth, no, sixth drink? He didn’t know, but he drank it like Hyunjin had drank his.

He swallowed until there was nothing left and then wished the effect he wanted was more immediate, and he could be far enough off his ass to have a better excuse for wanting to suddenly dance. 

He would dance, and maybe something would happen between Chan and Hyunjin, but that was his secret plan, his wingman plan. His nosey plan, perhaps, if Chan would tell him anything about it afterwards. 

Changbin stood up and started rolling the short sleeves of his tee up to his shoulders. Everybody looked over at him at once, and Changbin finally felt like he was in charge now, this was his pack of wolves. 

“Where are you going?” Hyunjin asked, taller than Changbin standing but looking quite diminutive from Changbin’s point of view. 

“I am going to set the dance floor on fire.” 

For a few scant seconds Hyunjin looked like he couldn’t choose between being exaggeratedly shocked and genuinely busting his gut, but the statement immediately earned unabashed laughter from the other two. Hyunjin’s giggles followed soon after and Chan even let out a whoop, fanning a hand at Changbin like Changbin was already alight. 

“I cannot let you do that alone,” Hyunjin gasped, a hand of his flying out to grasp and squeeze the thickest part of Changbin’s arm.

It immediately made Changbin falter. 

His roguish mystique had disappeared as quickly it’d manifested.

He opened his mouth and glanced down at Chan and Felix, who kind of looked like they really didn’t notice Hyunjin touching him, or really didn’t care. But he didn’t want to take his chances, and, wouldn’t he rather like to dance with Felix? 

“Felix,” he said, turning his arm away and out of Hyunjin’s grasp to reach out towards his secret garden and hold out a hand. He felt his whole face get even redder but who the hell was keeping track. 

Brown eyes widened at Changbin’s outstretched palm, but the flowering effect of his smile made them narrow, and he looked like a prince—no, a radiant fairy—standing up from his corner spot and sliding his warm hand into Changbin’s. 

“You want me to burn the dancefloor with you?” he sweetly asked with a giggle tinkling at the edges of his voice. He stepped past Hyunjin, excusing himself when he bumped into him, and Chan finally joined everybody else standing, but Changbin was letting him loose. 

Dancing was suddenly for Felix now. For Chan and Hyunjin a little, but mostly for Felix now. 

He was floating as he held Changbin’s hand. His silvery bangs reflected the club lights and in the long-exposure of Changbin’s dizzy vision, the colors created a little romantic crown on his head that was made of glass. 

“Yeah. Aren’t you made of sunlight?” 

Changbin was drunk, he just said what his heart felt and couldn’t remember he wasn’t a poet and was supposed to exhibit a little more restraint.

Felix blossomed beautifully and laughed at him, looking a bit taken aback by the admission so Changbin would have to tell him a million times so Felix would understand. 

“Thank you, I think? C’mon, Hyunjin and Chan wanna dance too.” 

Changbin let Felix lead him out to the dancefloor, his hand in Felix’s like he was being guided up to Heaven. 

He did not mind following Felix at all, not like he minded when Hyunjin did it. Felix could take him anywhere he pleased and Changbin would choose to be his lamb.


	4. nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think you’re beautiful.” 
> 
> Truth. Not nearly the whole truth, but something very much like it.  
> \--  
> hyunchan DISASTER

Chan didn’t know how to dance, but that was okay because Hyunjin on the other hand seemed to be intimately familiar. 

Hyunjin moved his body around like he shared the same kind of secrets with dancing that he did with everything else in his life. Felix, the roommate, more corporeal than Hyunjin but equally as wonderful, had talked in detail about his life after being dropped into Chiyoda City, yet, for whatever reason, couldn’t seem to talk about Hyunjin in any way other than a reverent caricature. Despite Hyunjin playing such a massive role in the kid’s life, deciding to live under the same roof as him, it seemed like Felix knew just as much about Hyunjin as Chan did. 

But, in a way, it felt like a sign of good etiquette to just stand back and marvel at Hyunjin, watch how Hyunjin handled his world; appreciate Hyunjin at a distance like an already finished painting. Felix might’ve felt the same way. 

Chan could tell from the look on Changbin’s face all night, he should’ve asked Hyunjin more questions, and maybe he should’ve, maybe he totally should’ve. 

It was just that, how could anything be wrong when there was no precedent for what was right anyways? 

All of Hyunjin was so beautiful to look at and be with. Everything felt right. 

  
  


“You can hold on to me,” Hyunjin yelled after some amount of completely unaccounted for time on the dancefloor. 

Chan forgot how long he’d even been out there, he’d initially used however long it’d been since the first DJ had gotten up on stage as his metric, but he was fucked as soon as he realized a new DJ had taken the first one’s place and he had absolutely no idea when that’d even happened. The music hadn’t lulled, or maybe it had? Or was it supposed to? Chan hardly ever went to clubs, he had no idea. 

For most of however long he was there, though, he was with Hyunjin, and he definitely hadn’t been touching him. He’d been mostly watching him, feeling inconspicuous enough under the dark club lights and drunk enough on somewhere around 10 shots of something or the other to throw his body around a little while he did so. He didn’t really think what he was doing ever mattered that much, anyway, because Hyunjin never stopped singing and dancing and Chan never, ever wanted him to. He could’ve just looked at Hyunjin forever, if Hyunjin didn’t mind. 

“I can what?” Chan asked, feeling something in himself start to heat up from deep, deep inside his stomach. Deep enough that it couldn’t be all the body heat dancing had been wracking up. The process of stopping Hyunjin’s kittenish face from spinning in his vision while Chan struggled to steady his eye on it wasn’t exactly helping ease his mild sense of panic. 

“You can hold on to me,” Hyunjin repeated, and he stopped bouncing and gyrating for a split second to take a step closer and gently brush his hands down the sides of Chan’s arms. 

Chan couldn’t stop his reflexive twitch, and electricity fired under the wake of Hyunjin’s fingers catching on something in him that should not have been so combustible. 

Chan had only opted to keep his hands off since getting on the floor, because as pathetic as it sounded, it’d been perfectly fulfilling enough to just look and enjoy Hyunjin enjoying himself. Chan hadn’t considered Hyunjin would want his hands on him, but as Chan’s skin continued to buzz underneath his jacket suddenly the thought was ricocheting off of every inch of the inside of Chan’s body, unleashed and forcing heat to rise to all the highest points in him and making him breathe a little faster. Suddenly, there wasn’t anything on God’s green Earth Chan had ever wanted to do more. 

“Okay.” 

The sensation of his heart beginning to palpitate could’ve made him sick as Chan took his own unsteady step closer, but Chan swallowed that thought and all the other ones like it that were gathering in his throat down roughly, because he wasn’t a child and he needed to chill the fuck out.

He moved his arms from where they were swinging in front of him for a lot of his dance moves, and opened his hands to find a spot for them on Hyunjin’s narrow body. He let out a drowned-out noise of surprise when Hyunjin suddenly beat him to the punch, tossing his head to shake out his hair, then flopping his arms over Chan’s shoulders. He curled a hand around the back of Chan’s neck and although his jewelry was freezing cold where it pressed against Chan’s nape, Hyunjin’s skin was hot and humid like the beach. 

Feeling himself flush Chan scrambled to catch up, God he was so fucking slow, and grabbed onto Hyunjin’s hips where the crest of them would be. Recalling a diagram of human pelvis in his head, Chan knew he was holding the highest part of them, the part that you could see from underneath the skin and the part that slotted right into the center of his hands. 

The music was becoming thicker and less distinct, coagulating into viscous noise that just provided a steady swell for Chan to ride on without any need to think. Hyunjin was still completely embodying it, though. His arms around Chan’s neck made no difference in how beautifully he swayed, like he was created to move to music. Like his muscles were made out of soundwaves. 

Chan let his eyes flutter shut, and felt the easy roll of Hyunjin’s body under his fingers where he was holding him. Letting it create ripples in his body starting from his hands, it pulled whatever moisture was left out of Chan’s mouth, especially when he started to concentrate on it, and manifest how much he liked it. He focused on how Hyunjin felt for a few seconds longer, then scraped together enough of his own mind to peel open his eyes again.

It felt so fundamentally different from how it’d been before. Chan could see his paint strokes, pink and white, purple and red. The sweat on his forehead and upper lip, mouth hanging open and eyes shut. 

Chan shuddered as he realized Hyunjin looked like sex.

Blinking hard, Chan wasn’t sure when or even if he was supposed to let that kind of fantasy start to seep in, losing his concept of the boundaries he might’ve been expected to not want to cross. Chan would’ve sworn he moved his head to look down at the rest of Hyunjin against his own volition, before he could find the right way to ask permission. At once, Chan realized how thin Hyunjin’s shorts appeared to be, before he got the chance to parse through any further, more intelligent thoughts. 

They were some stretchy black material compression shorts were made out of, and they elevated the feeling of every single twist Hyunjin did in Chan’s hands. More notably at that moment was that they were thin and tight, stretching over Hyunjin’s lower stomach and hips, squeezing his thighs. They were mesmerizing on Hyunjin, who swayed a couple inches away from the front of Chan’s crotch. He could be right against it if Chan pulled, but Chan had to resurface. He needed to recoup for just a second. 

What was Hyunjin thinking right now? What did Hyunjin want? This was about Hyunjin right now, certainly more now than it had ever been.

When Chan spoke, his voice was pathetically croaky. 

“Hyunjin,” he breathed, “Hyunjin. I-” 

“Yesssss?” 

Hyunjin turned his head down towards Chan and slowly opened his eyes. He looked like he’d been interrupted out of a dream. 

Chan stared back at him like his own veil’d been lifted, then immediately let the shame start plucking at his skin. Fuck, he should’ve snuffed out the fire when he still had the chance, before he let himself put his dick in the driver’s seat.

“I—I,” something smart, it’s too late now.

“I think you’re beautiful.” 

Truth. Not nearly the whole truth, but something very much like it. 

Hyunjin’s gorgeous smile slowly reappeared and he pulled some hair behind his ear with an uncoordinated hand. It was unbelievably cute and sexy and Chan felt his grip on Hyunjin’s hips tighten to something woefully crushing as he swallowed and could only watch. 

Relief hit Chan first, and then confusion shortly after, because without a word, Hyunjin visibly seemed to lift back off into his secret headspace as his eyes rolled back and closed before he started leaning forward, towards Chan. Goosebumps erupted across every square inch of him when Hyunjin got close enough to press his nose against the side of Chan’s head.

Okay, so that went well? As well as it could’ve considering it did nothing consequential, but Chan wanted to work with it, he wanted to desperately. Quickly, he opened up his arms to begin sliding them around Hyunjin’s waist, attempting to show that he was cool, it was good, Hyunjin didn’t need to say shit. However, he froze the very second Hyunjin’s lips pressed against the shell of his ear, warm and pretty and moving as he whispered. 

“Chan, do you want to fuck me?” 

Oh, God.

The walls crumpled into tissue paper. 

Chan pressed the lower half of his face against the crook of Hyunjin’s neck and the noise of the club was reduced to nothing but what was between him and Hyunjin. 

“Why are you asking...?” 

His voice was shaking, and he considered grinding his dick against him.

Hyunjin leaned back, which forced Chan to look up at him again, something Chan invited in a red-hot haze, wanting to look into Hyunjin’s eyes and see the same barely contained wildfire licking at the surface of his skin. For a second, however, for a split second Chan wished he could take back, Chan looked into Hyunjin’s eyes and saw absolutely nothing.

It was startling. Chan’s eyes flicked back and forth between Hyunjin’s then started combing around outside of them, almost frantically. What was this? What was any of this? 

Why _was_ Hyunjin asking?

Absolutely nothing. Hyunjin just looked as beautiful as ever, like a stained glass window, and drunk, smiling messily at Chan and dripping with sweat. 

At the same time as Chan felt his heart throb, enamored beyond any sense, his stomach twisted and he felt uncomfortable. 

Reality reinflated around him as loud and abrasive as ever when the smile suddenly began to slide from off of Hyunjin’s face. 

“Wait-” Chan rushed. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Chan quickly shook his head, Hyunjin must’ve seen him hesitate, must’ve felt guilty because Chan was fucking horrible at this and couldn’t focus long enough to be concise about his own feelings. Chan liked it when Hyunjin was a painting, untouchable, magical. Chan would rather die than rip Hyunjin out of his pretty reverie again. 

Hyunjin was shaking his head too. 

“No, I’m so sorry-” 

“What? Hyunjin, I’m sorry I can’t hear you!” 

He could see Hyunjin’s lips moving but he was mumbling, his voice was always so quiet. The club noises were still banging and bumping, completely oblivious around them. 

“I-I shouldn’t be-I shouldn’t have-” Hyunjin was speaking only a touch louder, but it didn’t even look directed at Chan, it was like he was speaking to himself.

Chan didn’t know if it was right but he squeezed Hyunjin’s waist with his hands, thinking maybe he could caress the frown off of him, embrace it out of his system. He wanted to undo whatever had been done as soon as possible, so Hyunjin would start smiling again and keep dancing like nothing else existed. 

“No no no! D-do—do you want to…? I can, we can!” 

Chan sounded so desperate, even to himself, but he didn’t want to make Hyunjin upset. He would rather die.

“You’re beautiful, so fucking beautiful Hyunjin, I could!” 

Is sex what Hyunjin wanted? Chan could do sex, wanted to, even. He didn’t think Hyunjin only wanted him around for sex, if that’s what Hyunjin was thinking. He only asked why Hyunjin was asking because he was curious. He was nervous. He was not _scared_ of Hyunjin. It was simple like that, simple and stupid. Chan was so fucking stupid, he wished he was better than that. 

Hyunjin’s face suddenly twisted up and he began squirming out of Chan’s arms. Fuck, fuck. It didn’t take much for him to get out, Chan let him go like he’d been burned by fire, even if initially he’d wanted to get burned. 

“Hyunjin-” 

Hyunjin turned away from him and started to elbow his way through the sea of bodies. Chan didn’t even begin to consider if it was okay or not to follow him, immediately moving too as he blinked the sweat from his eyes. He probably looked like a deranged monster tailing a deer, frantically pushing his way through clusters of people wide-eyed and wheezing, frantic and half-hard. Hyunjin moved fast, making expert work of winding through the crowd despite how inebriated his gait was, but Chan managed to keep track of him, just barely, tracking him with the help of his height and blonde ponytail. 

“Wait! Hyunjin!” 

His narrow body ducked past the vip booths and past the way Chan and Changbin had come in and into a better lit section of the club where the purple and red haze didn’t reach. Chan was practically galloping after him but Hyunjin didn’t stop moving until he took a sharp turn into a little hallway and slammed open a swinging door with the full weight of his body, veering into the dimly lit room behind it.

Chan had no fucking clue where he was going, everything was spinning violently the further away from the dance floor he got and felt even more confusing when the lights got brighter and the number of human bodies started to decline. He shoved into the same dim room right after Hyunjin, only realizing he’d followed him into the bathroom when he heard the unmistakable sound of heaving into a toilet bowl echoing off dark tile walls. 

“Hyunjin,” Chan wheezed, out of breath. 

There were only two stalls so Chan just stumbled towards the first one, then slammed it shut when he found it was empty and stopped in the doorway of the second one. His ears were ringing but his heart was fucking thundering, his pulse behind his eyes and in his head as he collapsed to slide down onto his knees and straddle the line between being too close and “giving space”. 

Hyunjin was sat with his legs splayed out underneath him, hunched over the toilet bowl where his long arms laid around the rim. His chest heaved as every gasp of air echoed painfully loud against the porcelain and against the bathroom tiles sounding several times louder than it should’ve as it filled up the whole of the empty bathroom.

This probably wasn’t Chan’s fault but it felt like it, he thought miserably, looking over Hyunjin’s supermodel figure, that, weightless only minutes ago, was now collapsed, laying heavily like a sack on the bathroom floor. 

“I’m so fucking sorry!” Hyunjin suddenly cried, and Chan sat up, lifting a hand to Hyunjin’s back to stroke him and try and absolve him of all the things he could’ve possibly been apologizing for. Before he could, Hyunjin’s head suddenly came up from inside the toilet bowl and Chan felt the floor swoop underneath him as he looked at Hyunjin’s face. 

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” 

Hyunjin was screaming at the ceiling. His eyes were screwed shut and his head was back as screams then dissolved into wet sobs that shook his shoulders and made him gasp. Mucus, or vomit, or both, hung out of his nose and dribbled onto his upper lip, and his face was wet from tears and sweat. Chan almost didn’t want to look at him, feeling like he never was supposed to, because this right now was a lot whereas up til now Hyunjin had decidedly been anything but a lot.

It dawned on Chan that it seemed like Hyunjin wasn’t even addressing him. In fact, Hyunjin probably stopped talking to Chan in general a long time ago, and Chan was just noticing it now.

Chan whispered, “It’s okay,” but Hyunjin was suddenly throwing his head in the toilet to retch again and Chan was guilted into silence. He didn’t think he’d have sex with Hyunjin that night, but he didn’t think he’d be watching whatever this might’ve been either. Chan didn’t think anything about anyone that night, actually. Maybe that was his problem.

“I’m so fucking stupid!” Hyunjin screamed into the bowl, hitting the heels of his hands against the toilet seat for a few seconds then slumping again and crying more. 

“I hate my fucking life! I hate my fucking life!” 

Chan felt reminded of a child then suddenly thought of Jeongin. But Hyunjin was not Jeongin, there was no comparison. 

“I miss my puppy so much I’m so fucking sorry! I’m so sorry!” 

“Hyunjin,” Chan felt his heart rate kick up again as he realized he definitely was _not_ supposed to be seeing this. Just knowing that there was a pet—a dog, apparently—in Hyunjin’s life that before now Hyunjin hadn’t mentioned to Chan felt like a breach of privacy. No, Hyunjin was not Jeongin, so Chan decided he was not the one well-equipped enough to handle Hyunjin like he would handle Jeongin. 

Chan attempted to shush him gently while he heaved himself to his feet, placing a hand on the stall wall to steady himself for a second before he could find himself on the floor again. His head still pounding, he turned back to Hyunjin and sucked in a breath of air, slowly taking in how disorienting to see Hyunjin so… passive… and corporeal. It was wrong of Chan to be there, as much as he wanted to melt into Hyunjin’s skin. He fucked up beyond belief and had prolonged the sickening arrival of penance well beyond his allotted timeframe.

“I’ll get Felix,” Chan croaked, and didn’t wait for a reply before rushing out the bathroom and shoving his beanie into his pocket. 

Chan and Changbin followed silently behind Felix and Hyunjin as they made their way out of the club and it couldn’t have felt more like a funeral procession. Chan wished the exaggerated comparison could’ve made him laugh, but Felix had carefully arranged Hyunjin’s fancy oversized blazer to cover the blond’s head and entire upper body, concealing the worst of him like police would do with a corpse at a crime scene. And, of course, the whole night was as good as dead.

They filed out of the front door one at a time, and when they all finally stepped outside it was like they’d arrived at the burial site, only a few meters left before they’d find the hole. 

Felix turned as much as he could towards Chan and Changbin, still supporting a tall black mass against himself with his pretty face so deeply scored with sadness it only further assured Chan that this, all of this, reached deeper than anyone was supposed to see. 

“Text me, okay? I had a lot of fun you guys…”

Felix was gorgeous, even when his smile was sad. Chan nodded and looked at the ground. 

“Remember what I told you about my place?” Changbin said, and Chan glanced at him in confusion before he watched Felix’s heavy smile brighten just a bit. 

“Your bunny?” 

“Yeah, she really wants to meet you, I told you I just know it.” 

Felix laughed a little—Chan’s stomach did a flip—and he nodded. 

“Sure, of course. Just text me alright? Hyunjin and I would love to meet her.” 

He then turned back to Hyunjin and pressed out a long sigh, his big eyes getting round and watery again. Chan noticed Felix’s eyes weren’t quite like Hyunjin’s. Where Hyunjin’s were inky and silk, Felix’s were linen and bright. 

“Okay, yeah,” Changbin said, wringing his hands then nodding. 

“You sure you don’t want us to walk you back to the station? Chan could carry Blondie no problem, I know he wouldn’t mind.” 

No, Chan wouldn’t mind, but he knew Changbin didn’t care about if Hyunjin might. He opened his mouth to try and include Hyunjin in the discussion, but Felix shook his head. 

“I think it’s better if we say bye here. We’ll be fine, I got him.” 

Chan knew Changbin was trying to draw it out for as long as he could, and he’d completely understand if they’d swapped places, and Changbin was the one who ruined Chan’s whole night. But, if, before shit hit the fan, Changbin had been dancing with Felix like Chan had danced with Hyunjin, felt Felix’s body roll like Chan and held Felix’s hips in his hands like Chan, then Chan could find it in himself to be more patient. He had hoped those few minutes would’ve lasted the rest of his life, so if Changbin was enchanted by Felix, Chan supposed he could sympathize. 

“Okay, okay,” Changbin relented. “See you soon, guys. I will text.” 

“Mhmm, alright. Bye-bye Changbin, bye Chan. Nice meeting you…” 

Chan waved and said goodbye, then watched as he hobbled off with Hyunjin, looking like he was putting a lot of effort into holding him as close to his body as he was. 

Once they were out of earshot, Changbin folded his arms and scuffed his shoe against the cobblestone of the sidewalk, huffing with contempt that Chan knew wasn’t exclusively Hyunjin’s doing.

“Chris-” 

“I know.” 

“You know what, Chris?” 

“I don’t know, I just know, Changbin, okay? I’m too fucking drunk for this.” 

Changbin was silent for a second. Then, 

“Well I can’t stop Felix from bringing him to my place, so.” 

“No, Changbin. I guess you can’t.” 

  
  
  


**Hwang Hyunjin ^^**

**Today** 2:18 AM

i hope you got home safely!

and i hope you don’t get a hangover :( 

tonight was awesome, felix is awesome and you’re awesome 

**Today** 3:54 AM

you looked beautiful, by the way. 

i just wanted to tell you again

and i’m sorry, seriously 

if i fucked up 

sorry

please don’t think any of this is your fault

i wanted to kiss you

okay i’m sorry that was maybe too much

i hope you’re okay

yeah

**Delivered**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> genuinely im just writing this straight ahead so chapter formatting might change over time

**Author's Note:**

> this was the hardest thing to do tags for ever SHEESH. more tags will be applicable as i go so all i can do is hope that my summary is inciting enough.


End file.
